Where are you getting stats on that? Do the stats account for what state the vehicle was in when it started on fire? Like, was it in a violent accident vs parked at home? Was it in good repair or was it old and neglected? A car spontaneously combusting and burning down your house is not the same thing as a car bursting into fire from an obvious root cause.
ICE vehicles have their own issues in the cold for sure. You wonât hear about those in these types of posts though.
If you grew up in a winter country Iâm sure in the old days, say at least 20 years ago, you would remember the annual television ads with folks turning the key in their car and not having it start.
I remember reading the stories and complaining about city bus fleets (hundreds of vehicles) left running overnight during cold weather because they would have trouble restarting the engines the next day.
The difference with then and now is you didnât have horse breeding industry simps running to the internet trying to post âgotchaâ stories questioning the viability of gasoline or diesel vehicles and thinking out loud that they should come with warning labels and âproper educationâ before sale.
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That was US government data for the ICEs and some insuranceâs data for Teslaâs IIRC. Someone had linked an article on another platform ages ago, Iâd have to dig through the web to unearth it again. Since itâs 2 separate entities giving the data, obviously they may be measuring it in different ways (although âburnedâ and âhasnât burnedâ is pretty clear, unlike the age old topic âat which point is a battery actually broken/EOLâ).
ICE vehicles have had numerous improvements over time. Typically you just need a good battery with enough cold cranking amps and youâre good to go. If itâs a really, really cold region, maybe a block heater. People donât talk about the problems because they are well-understood and/or solved as far as most are concerned.
Meanwhile, EVs are being sold hard to try and get the ball rolling. Personally, I just want people to be informed about what theyâre getting into. I mean did you hear about the Ford CEO who didnât know the capability of his electric trucks? Shows that the marketing is too effectively misleading imo.
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Iâll look too, I just want to know more. Thereâs actually a lot of ways the numbers could be misleading when it comes to burned vs not-burned. To name a few:
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counting the number of burned cars of each type without accounting for the differences in how many of each type are in existence
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counting spontaneous combustion in the garage the same as cars that have crashed or been abused. (hypothetically, if the chance of burning your house down is higher with EV, it doesnât matter what the overall chance of burning is for ICE)
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counting insurance claims as fact
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counting vehicle fires that took place before safety advances were made (i.e. the chances of older cars burning is probably higher)
Itâs believable to me that EV risks might be higher right now simply because manufacturers are still learning design lessons. Itâs probably just growing pains, but I think the news stories are not a bad thing because it will push the manufacturers to make their cars more intrinsically safe.
This was all over the news the other day.
BTW, if there is even a 1% chance the manufacturer feels the customer may have cause the battery damage, they will deny the warranty.
Yikes! The $60,000 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Battery Replacement Saga Continues - autoevolution
ICE vehicles have their problems in the coldâŚ
Sure⌠but why is that⌠most of the time itâs because of poor maintenance.
I for one wold like to know⌠when the politicians finally get their wish & ban the sale of ICE powered vehicles & equipment, what is supposed to take the place of all the big rigs on the road keeping the world from going hungry⌠The excavators, the bulldozers, the loaders & farm equipment that harvest & move the food, minerals & lifeblood of the world⌠These are all huge pieces of equipment that use vast amounts of energy on an hourly basisâŚ
Forget even trying to power big stuff⌠whatâs going to power your landscapers dump truck, your tree guys chipper or the towns plow truck fleetâŚ
Additionally, from what Iâve seen, electric equipment sucks, hands down, when compared to ICE equivelants⌠Whether itâs hand tools, leaf blowers or chainsaws⌠itâs always a joke. It either horrible to begin with or even when the power is there its only good for 20-30secs before it overheats & shuts down.
Sheesh, even downgrading from diesel to gasoline in order avoid the insanely expensive teir 4 carb requirements that gov has mandated on new diesel equipment is a nightmare⌠You still spend a fortune, avoid the teir 4 emissions garbage, but end up with anemic underpowered equipment that takes twice as long to do itâs intended job.
Even if electric equipment didnât suck & could last as long as a tank of fuel, what are these businesses supposed to do when their equipment runs out of juice on site? Stop production for 2 or 3 hours while they pack up their equpment & tow it to the nearest charging station that doesnât exist??? Whoâs going to pay the overhead on that?? Your employees donât stop getting payed just because your equipment isnât running ⌠Idk about you, but at $200 - $500hr (whatever your small business charges) Iâm not sure many consumers are going to be on board with that⌠I know i wouldnt⌠But hey, itâs ok because the gov mandated it, itâs must be good!
You can apply this to any business that this EV crusade curses.
Short of one off examples, there is no solution, but still the laws are being passed by politicians to ban the sale of this stuff⌠& If you think theyâll stop at passenger cars, your crazy.
If they were ready for the market then people making them would have merely sold them and people would have bought them, government and tax dollar subsidies, and more, were not required to sell the cars people wanted.
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Heat pumps, solar panels etc are all mature and ready for market, and still needed gov subsidiaries to really kick off⌠Sometimes people just need an incentive to start looking at new things, unless they are so ridiculously better than what they replaced (LED flashlights instead of halogen bulbs :D). Hell, even incandescent bulbs for house lighting needed to be outlawed by the gov in many european nations to convince people to switch to LED - at a time where cheap decent-CRI bulbs where available in any store.
Also, EVs are expensive to make (NaIon might change that, if we see the lower prices or if it gets all chewed up in corpo profit remains to be seen), so many people simply do not have the money laying around to âbuy intoâ the new tech. Spending less on fuel is nice and all, but I still gotta be able to afford the thing first. And most EVs suck in that regard. Also, current state-of-the-tech can still not replace ICEs in any regard, so a lot of people would have to keep their ICE car, and buy an additional EV for day-by-day commute, but canât afford owning 2 vehicles.
BYD claimed that their Seagull will end up on EU market for ~10k⏠which would be insane. NaIon battery, which partially explains the price. Aggressive pricing to grab a foothold in EU (maybe even at a loss) probably accounts for the rest. Hope they will actually hit that price - no-brainer for 10k.
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For me EVs are a technology driven by (questionable) political decisions.
The technology itself (electric motors to power a vehicle) is really cool, I love the sound and feeling of absolute power in EMU trains, here in Germany are a lot of them.
But in cars, for individual mobility⌠no. It is not clear where the material for all these cells will be come from, and recycling is also not a thing currently. If all crs should be replaced by EVs, this is not possible I think. It seems individual mobility by car is something for the more wealthy people in futureâŚ
And the vehicles itself are way too expensive. This is my main issue there.
A novice driver simply cannot afford such vehicles. The cheapest electric car at the moment is probably the Dacia Spring, and 200 km range in everyday use is already good. A used car with ICE costs considerably less and fuel is available on every corner. In addition, there are fewer prerequisites for refueling (no PV system, no home, no charging station nearby). This is simply still a problem, at least here in Germany and especially in rural areas.
I also not like the computerization in these modern cars. These features (autononoums driving etc) is what they make so expensiveâŚ
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I agree. Modern EVs are basically as if the smartphone market only had iPhones, Samsung Galaxy Ultra and Huawei Mate Pro, so to speak. We cram every car full of luxury tech and fancy things, that makes price go up, while the majority of people just wants to drive to work without breaking a bank and the car looking like an absolute trainwreck (why are so many EVs so incredibly ugly??).
We need the Redmi, Samsung A53 etc of cars too, though. Not everyone wants, needs or can afford to own a Galaxy S24 Ultra. Just a basic phone to make calls. In the shape of a car, since I got lost in my analogy now.
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Yes, this is a good analogy. We need a new âVolkswagenâ, an affordable EV with decent range for everyone who wants a car to get to work or family. No self-driving, no expensive computers or complicated software, only a vehicle with some seats, a steering wheel and a good traction system.
And in best case, this should be produced without sponsoring by governments or other tricks. A car, which can be produced with good margin. I donât think that this is impossible. Maybe at the moment, but I think the established companies should re-think how such a car could look like. No SUV like shape, but some small size at low weight, for urban and also rural areasâŚ
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I would happily buy a 1967 Volkswagon bug today which would run about $14, 700 in todayâs dollars.
Agreed!
Feel free to state your opinions on this subject, but donât argue or try to convince others who have a different opinion.
Apparently AI dashboards are next 
If only the âVolkswagenâ we already have actually made anything close to an actual âVolkswagenâ 
IIRC the ID.3 that starts around 45k in Germany costs around 18k in China in the same config. And still loses out to domestic brands that manage to match its features for lower price. Tells a thing or two about the margins âVolkswagenâ is runningâŚ
EDIT: TBF, the 45k ID.3 is made in Germany, the 16k ID.3 is made in China. But I doubt the âmade in Chinaâ is worse in any way. The days where Chinese factories made the cheap shit and European ones the quality are long gone.
Same here. Iâm extremely dependent on computers for almost everything, but the screen interaction paradigm just doesnât work for me while driving.
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This term of âVolkswagenâ is not referred to VW as company 
It could be also from another brand, like from Stellantis. The biggest problem is the price. How the manager will deal with this, is not my problem. The customers (and the industry as whole) need low prices. But we should also not forget that purchasing power in China is different. (Donât know how exactly tbh)
Yeah, which is a pity in regard of the history of âmade in germanyâ stuff⌠but another story.
In 2025 VW will release the ID2.all (yes, thatâs really the name) which should cost around 20-25k ⏠- not as cheap as Dacia Spring, but a huge step to lower pricesâŚ
If these cars end up on our market for those prices, it will be a game-changer. Personally pretty stoked about the Seagull because NaIon tech, and decent specs for low price. Not the prettiest, but then again⌠Which modern car is not an eyesore. Itâs one of the less terrible ones imo.
And hopefully it will force the EU manufacturers to join the price race - more options (especially more domestic options, I like keeping money in the local industry if the options arenât terrible) is always good.
Possibly, but knowing that the Chinese government is also trying to expand its power in the West (which can be done by massively by government sponsored consumer goods like cars) is not so cool. The low price has to come from somewhere, and itâs certainly not just down to wages or something like that.
I remain very cautious before I start praising these cheap Chinese products. There are very important geopolitical and market strategies and power games behind this.
Hopefully our western companies will start to compete on a realistic price level with these chinese cars. If this is the case, these cars are good enough.
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